A review of assessment methods for cervical joint position sense

Cervical joint position sense (CJPS) plays an important role in perception of neck and head motions. The aim of this study was to investigate the tools and methods of assessing CJPS through a systematic review.For this purpose, a comprehensive literature search was done in Pubmed, Web of Science, Science Direct, CENTRAL, Google Scholar, Scopus, Iran Medex and SID until December ۲۰۲۱. After collecting the search results, the title and summary of the articles were studied by the research team. If the articles met the inclusion criteria, their results were used in the study and otherwise discarded.Review of included studies showed that various kinds of tools and methods have been used to assess CJPS, including Photography method, use of cervical range of motion (CROM) device, Inclinometer, and cervical repositioning method using laser or virtual reality technology. Our survey showed that during all of these methods, the subject is asked to use some words such as & quot;OK& quot; after reproducing the target angle so that the examiner can record that angle; then, difference between reproduced and target angle must be calculated to achieve the CJPS accuracy.Based on the results, it seems that existing methods for CJPS evaluation may have some measurement errors due to the way data is recorded; It s happening because of the time interval between when the subject feels to achieve the target angle and when the examiner records that. In fact, during this time, some changes may occur in reproduced angle that leads to an error in the results. However, if it were possible that our subjects could freeze reproduced angle by themselves exactly at the moment that they feel to achieve the target angle, it could be simply possible to record that angle and the examiner s speed or accuracy would have no effect on the results. So, it is recommended that future research focus on design methods for increase the accuracy of CJPS evaluation.

کلیدواژه ها:

Neck ، Priprioception ، Methods